Blues working towards their own field of dreams

Having resolved its most expensive but potentially rewarding on-field issue, Carlton now turns to the off-field disaster it inherited in the form of its problematic home base.

And what a difference a year makes. Just as Anthony Koutoufides ended 2003 having only resolved on the surface a bitter dispute over his massive contract, 12 months ago Optus Oval was regarded by the AFL and most of its clubs as an unattractive relic of a misguided administration.

If the prospect of Koutoufides's combined two-year package for 2004-2005 of $2.5 million appeared crazy but non-negotiable, Carlton's home ground was a white elephant comparable to the real mammals Ian Collins briefly allowed into the place when the opera Aida opened at Princes Park all those years ago.

The financial experts on Carlton's new board estimated a combined paper write-down on the two newest stands at more than $20 million. Like Kouta's contract, there was a view that the football world simply had to sit out the final years on the Optus-AFL contract.

Nobody wanted to play there and the attendance numbers at the home ground even Carlton had shunned for a new deal at Telstra Dome had savaged the AFL's crowd figures. The AFL, still seething at the club's legal threat in 2000 to use the stadium to challenge its media access rights, would no sooner have put money in its pocket to improve the facilities at Optus Oval than Collins at the start of 2003 would have offered Koutoufides the captaincy.

Melbourne, whose president Gabriel Szondy extolled fans to register their protest by not turning up, was forced to play two disastrous matches at the end of Royal Parade and when commissioner Bill Kelty asked Demon officials why on earth they would want to play at Optus Oval, they could only shake their heads and glare at the AFL chiefs who had put them there.

Collins, carefully trying to avoid more scrutiny than absolutely necessary upon his blatant conflict of interest, took his medicine in 2003 and Carlton played all Optus Oval's nine contracted AFL games.

The board used its home ground to make a couple of symbolic statements, banning smoking and renaming the Elliott Stand. But behind the scenes bigger changes are afoot.

While the Blues would seem to be loosening their grip on Optus - which has kept its name following long and careful negotiations - by playing one of its contracted 2004 games at Telstra Dome, the opposite is taking place.

On top of which, the AFL's attitude has shifted significantly. Over the coming weeks a series of meetings have been scheduled that could result in the league eventually pouring money from its own coffers into Optus Oval.

Already it has held talks with at least one other Victorian club - the Demons - strongly suggesting they consider moving their training base to Princes Park and sharing facilities with the Blues.

Melbourne is resisting the move, still believing it can reach a new deal with the MCG that would include establishing training facilities in the southern stand.

But still the availability of the MCG playing surface remains a seemingly immovable stumbling block and the Demons will probably be forced to find an oval somewhere in the Olympic Park precinct should the club move lock, stock and barrel to the "G".

But Carlton now believes that it will eventually woo another Victorian club to Optus and the AFL appears to be strongly supporting as much.

Former Melbourne City Council chief Michael Malouf now runs the Blues and the long-ago abandoned battle to build an underground carpark has been resurrected.

So has a multi-million dollar plan to improve the training facilities at Optus Oval. While the board will continue to debate behind the scenes between the relative merits of the MCG or Telstra Dome for the bulk of its future games - and you can guess where the president will place his vote - it has agreed that any future funding for club facilities comparable to those interstate will not place the club at risk as it has in the past.

The AFL, which has after all helped the non-Victorian clubs with their stadiums, is listening. Like Koutoufides, perhaps it can be swayed after all.